20 replies to this topic

[Simon]

http://www.allposter.../topicseen.html

 

The chap who posted this had also held an interview with him about his entire poster career.  But obviously we are mainly interested in the AVTAK withdrawn poster.

 

https://www.filmonpa...rview-vic-fair/

[Dustin]

Some very impressive designs, quite a departure from the current styles. I wasn't aware of the wide range of films he covered.

R.I.P.

[SecretAgentFan]

What a hugely talented artist - and what a shame that that kind of artistry is not wanted anymore on film posters.

[Simon]

Or indeed any kind of artistry if the Bond posters are anything to go by...

[Dustin]

Sadly only too true...

[Professor Pi]

I am familiar with his A View to a Kill poster, it being one of the few out of nearly a hundred that I don't own.  Had I known there were only a few hundred made, I would have snapped it up even at the exorbitant price I saw it at decades ago.

 

American marketing since Licence to Kill has killed the once glorious drawn artwork of the classic Bond tradition.  Fortunately, the art of Vic Flair, the late Bob Peak, and others outlives the artists that created them so the rest of us can still appreciate their work.

[Simon]

For my insignificant part, I don't harken back to the era of drawn art.  The days when posters had to shoulder the lion's share of the marketing of a movie are long gone now that Youtube and the rest has been introduced.

 

I don't need or want drawn art.  However, I do think if photography is the way forward, then 'photographic art' should be to the fore.  I doubt there will be anyone who says art cannot be photographic.  Or photography cannot be artistic.

 

But currently, the photography of the Bond posters is barely documentary in style and inspiration.  It is woeful.  And to my mind, even more so bearing in mind MGW is a renowned collector and appreciator of photography.  Why on earth he doesn't stand up and say, 'This is deficient in inspiration, Do better', is beyond me.

 

But am equally sure, they all know what they're doing....

[Dustin]

The drawn poster is probably as much a thing of the past as the human billboard, we will not see them often any more. But even in the Connery days there was the campaign for GOLDFINGER and it was vastly superior to most of what we've seen in the Craig days.

It is possible to do a campaign based of photography with very few elements and create something much more effective than the SKYFALL and SPECTRE posters. Indeed baffling that Eon is reportedly themselves behind these underwhelming efforts.

[Professor Pi]

Good points about today's marketing and the way of the drawn poster.  I did think some of the 90s Bond posters exhibited photographic art--the entire GoldenEye campaign, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World Is not Enough, particularly the International posters (the monochrome TND background monitors, and the UIP version of Die Another Day's screen shots reflected on ice.)  I read somewhere that the 'girl on fire' poster from TWINE won an industry art award.  Vintage Bond stuff indeed.

 

But the Craig marketing is woeful.  CR was okay, QoS disappointing.  Even the best stuff from Skyfall and SPECTRE--the Underground tunnel/gun barrel and the window gunshot are derivative of other marketing campaigns.  Fox's X-Men, Marvel and Star Wars still manage to have entertaining and interesting posters.  Even simple designs like The Wolverine's poster are eye catching.  MGM/Sony just seem uninspired about Bond.

[SecretAgentFan]

I don´t believe for a second that the "drawn poster" is a thing of the past.  It is one method to convey an impression.  Using photography just is quicker and cheaper - and that´s why that method was used from the 90´s onward.

 

The concept still is what makes a poster - and in that regard I, too, think that the Craig era has exhibited not much interest in design.   I do like the CR-poster which shows Vesper in the background in front of the casino.  Apart from that it was just basic branding: "put Bond in".  

 

I understand - I may be wrong - that EON signs off on every marketing idea.  So they probably have come to the conclusion that more artistic approaches to a marketing tool (that has lost its importance) is wasted time.

 

The drawn poster still can be much more interesting and effective though: http://www.impawards...logan_ver6.html

[Dustin]

Where I have my doubts about drawn images for promotional purposes is simply the way the industry works today: you make a couple of quality shots on a photo session; they can range from generic to fantastic, doesn't matter. And then everything else is done in your photoshop lab with all the tools you are ever going to need. You needn't even have a particular vision beforehand, all that can be developed as you go on experimenting. As a result you can come up with 50 or 100 different designs at a mouse klick without the need for your stars to invest more time than for the production stills.

All this is not as easily realised with a painted image, where you effectively have to have confidence in your artist and need to trust his vision before he comes up with four or five versions of basically the same idea. And if that idea doesn't hit it with the suits you are back on square one. That's why I'm hesitant to argue in favour of the drawn image, you have to have a streak of luck to pass this work through the various committees of global marketing. From an artistic point of view there is no reason why one should have the edge over the other.

[SecretAgentFan]

Absolutely.  It´s just a matter of "we can do it faster and cheaper".

 

The really sad thing is that "faster and cheaper" most of the time also trumps "better".

 

Photoshop, if employed well, could yield artistically interesting results - if the studios actually cared about that.  Today, it´s only about: does the artwork brand our project enough?  Can the consumer (yes, we´re only talking about consumers, not even viewers anymore) recognize the brand instantly?  That´s why they put Daniel Craig/Bond on the recent posters without anything else of particular importance.  "Heck, just change the colors around him, that should do it"...

[Simon]

Push to shove, there is little need for a poster anymore.  Names, people and youtube does it all..

 

The poster will go the same way as the many poster formats and lobby cards or FOH cards.

 

But while they still do pop together something in the printed form, and in respect of SPECTRE, I was amazed they never printed a poster of the broken glass image that was used for the press conference.  The only thing I have of that in printed form is a Bollinger Point of Sale board.

[SecretAgentFan]

The poster still is needed - for billboards, in cinemas and at least as one key image for the cover of the DVD/BLU-RAY or even the streaming icon.

 

Of course, as a collector who does love great posters on my walls I hope posters will stick around.

[Simon]

But as all billboards become screens, and as all still images become moving images, then, in time, I figure there will be nothing more than 'a logo against moving images on screens'.

 

Admittedly, I am not thinking next week, but maybe in 10 years' time.

 

The one slight anomaly to this is that, even though they still print god-awful US 1 sheet posters for SPECTRE et al, the number of dated variations, with and without the IMAX listing, is actually going UP.

 

Moonraker had five distinct poster designs for the US campaign - not counting the 1-Stops.  SPECTRE had three designs, but about four to six variations of each.  Same with Skyfall.  I still don't have my head around that thinking yet.

[David_M]

The "human billboard" remark was an eye-opener.  I'd never considered that painted posters were simply outmoded, and not just "too hard for lazy marketers to bother with."  But it makes sense.

 

I used to compare Bond films to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show: every couple of years the big show would breeze into my sleepy, boring small town and dazzle me with sights and sounds I couldn't get anywhere else.  Exotic cultures, beautiful women, daring exploits, mock battles on an epic scale...Bond was Buffalo Bill all over again, back in those days when "action blockbuster" didn't describe 75% of all films in the theater, 12 months a year.  And the Bond posters, like the Wild West posters, had to show all of those elements: the gadgets, the stunts, some explosions, some female flesh...the more outlandish and colorful, the better.  Because that's what they were seling: larger-than-life spectacle.  Something almost unique to 007, at the time.

 

Now we don't need all that: Youtube and a million entertainment sites show us trailers, teasers, preview clips, etc months in advance til it's a miracle if there's any surprises left once the film hits the theater.  Of course we know already we're getting "spectacle" or we wouldn't bother leaving our home theaters to pay stupid prices for an often unpleasant crowd experience.  Nothing but a blockbuster would get us motivated in the first place. All we need from a poster now is the merest marker to tell us which screen it's on: Spectre is in Theater 4, down the hall to your right, thank you.  So to keep the cost and effort to a minimum, we'll look ahead to the Blu-Ray release and design a poster that will look good on a tiny little box cover.  Where before, two feet by four feet was barely enough to contain all the imagery, and sometimes we had to go to 24-sheets, or billboards, now we just keep it simple and spare because all those details will only be lost anyway when we shrink everything down to Blu-Ray size.  All we're getting with "movie posters" now is an oversized preview of the home release packaging art.

 

It's also possible it has something to do with the internet: they've already proven that book jackets sell better when they're simple because they're easier to make out as thumbnails on Amazon.  Cover art is mostly dead now in favor of solid color (preferably yellow) backgrounds and big, simple text. Possibly the same applies to movie listings on Fandango or wherever people buy their tickets online; if people can't make out the poster image as a thumbnail, they don't click to buy.

[Professor Pi]

Still, yet Marvel's MCU and Disney's Star Wars still put effort into well designed posters.  I just saw the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 poster and it was eye catching.

[David_M]

Yes, but one of the subtexts of GOTG involves StarLord's fixation on vintage rock, which features prominently in the soundtracks.  I think the poster, like the music, is a deliberate callback to an earlier age, just like the "Stranger Things" logo and credits made that show look like it was produced in the early 80s.  

 

That said, I would agree that Marvel has great posters in general.  But then, they do most things better than other franchises.

[SecretAgentFan]

Marvel definitely has the advantage of their source being comic books.  Still, Bond is pulp fiction and therefore could easily pull off a drawn poster again.

 

It´s all in the vision of the producers.  And I get the feeling that EON poured every ounce of it into CASINO ROYALE - and then did not know how to proceed or lost interest, therefore empowering arthouse directors to deliver their version.  With Mendes at the helm they completely folded and surrendered.

[SecretAgentFan]

By the way - there might be some new movies who actually want to delve into nostalgia and therefore warrant a wonderful drawn poster: 

 

http://www.impawards..._ver2_xxlg.html

[Dustin]

This is something different for sure.